Four for Tomorrow Part 8

"Usually a step-scale of percentages on the returns from his investments is arranged. In fact, a Set counselor will be right there when you liquidate your a.s.sets, and he'll recommend the best conversions."

69."Set must clean up on this."

"Certainement. It is a business, and the Parties don't come cheaply. But then, you'd be a part of Set yourself -being a shareholder is one of the membership require- ments-and we're a restricted corporation, paying high dividends. Your princ.i.p.al will grow. If you were to be accepted, join, and then quit after even one objective month, something like twenty actual years would have pa.s.sed. You'd be a month older and much wealthier when you leave-and perhaps somewhat wiser."

"Where do I go to put my name on the list?"

He knew, but he had hopes.

"We can call it in tonight, from here. There is always someone in the office. You will be visited in a week or so, after the preliminary investigation."

"Investigation?"

"Nothing to worry about. Or have you a criminal rec- ord, a history of insanity, or a bad credit rating?"

Moore shook his head.

"No, no, and no."

"Then you'll pa.s.s."

"But will I actually have a chance of getting in, against all those others?"

It was as though a single drop of rain fell upon his chest.

"Yes," she replied, putting her cheek into the hollow of his neck and staring out over his shoulder so that he could not see her expression, "you'll make it all the way to the lair of Mary Maude Mullen with a member spon- soring you. That final hurdle will depend on yourself."

"Then I'll make it," he told her.

". . . The interview may only last seconds. She's quick; her decisions are almost instantaneous, and she's never wrong."

50 "Then I'll make it," he repeated, exulting.

Above them, the zodiac rippled.

70.Moore found Darryl Wilson in a bannat in the Poco- nos. The actor had gone to seed; he was not the man Moore remembered from the award-winning frontier threelie series. That man had been a crag-browed, bushy- faced Viking of the prairies. In four years' time a facial avalanche had occurred, leaving its gaps and runnels across his expensive frown and dusting the face fur a shade lighter. Wilson had left it that way and cau- terized his craw with the fire water he had denied the Bed Man weekly. Rumor had it he was well into his second liver, Moore sat beside him and inserted his card into the counter slot. He punched out a Martini and waited.

When he noticed that the man was unaware of his pres- ence, he observed, "You're Darryl Wilson and I'm Alvin Moore. I want to ask you something."

The straight-shooting eyes did not focus.

"News media man?"

"No, an old fan of yours," he lied.

"Ask away then," said the still-familiar voice. "You are a camera."

"Mary Maude Mullen, the b.i.t.c.h-G.o.ddess of the Set,"

he said. "What's she like?"

The eyes finally focused.

"You up for deification this session?"

"That's right."

"What do you think?"

Moore waited, but there were no more words, so he finally asked, "About what?"

"Anything. You name it."

Moore took a drink. He decided to play the game if it would make the man more tractable.

"I think I like Martinis," he stated. "Now-"

"Why?"

Moore growled. Perhaps Wilson was too far gone to be of any help. Still, one more try ...

71."Because they're relaxing and bracing, both at the 51 same time, which is something I need after coming all this way."

"Why do you want to be relaxed and braced?"

"Because I prefer it to being tense and unbraced."

"Why?"

"What the h.e.l.l is all this?"

"You lose. Go home."

Moore stood.

"Suppose I go out again and come back in and we start over? Okay?"

"Sit down. My wheels turn slowly but they still turn,"

said Wilson. "We're talking about the same thing. You want to know what Mary Maude is like? That's what she's like-all interrogatives. Useless ones. Att.i.tudes are a disease that no one's immune to, and they vary so easily in the same person. In two minutes she'll have you stripped down to them, and your answers will depend on biochemistry and the weather. So will her decision.

There's nothing I can tell you. She's pure caprice. She's life. She's ugly."

"That's all?"

"She refuses the wrong people. That's enough. Go away."

Moore finished his Martini and went away.

That winter Moore made a fortune. A modest one, to be sure.

He quit his job for a position with the Akwa Mining Research Lab, Oahu Division. It added ten minutes to his commuting time, but the t.i.tle. Processing Director, sounded better than a.s.sistant Division Chief, and he was anxious for a new sound. He did not slacken the pace of his forcefed social acceptability program, and one of its results was a January lawsuit.

The Set, he had been advised, preferred divorce male candidates to the perpetually single sort. For this reason, 72.he had consulted a highly-rated firm of marriage con- tractors and entered into a three-month renewable, single partner drop-option contract, with Diane Demetrics, an unemployed model of Greek-Lebanese extraction.

One of the problems of modeling, he decided later, was that there were many surgically-perfected female eidolons in the labor force. His newly-acquired status had been sufficient inducement to cause Diane to press a breach of promise suit on the basis of an alleged oral agreement that the option would be renewed.

52 Burgess Social Contracting Services of course sent a properly obsequious adjuster, and they paid the court costs as well as the medfees for Moore's broken nose.

(Diane had hit him with The Essentials of Dress Display, a heavy, ill.u.s.trated talisman of a manual, which she carried about in a plastic case-as he slept beside their pool-plastic case and all.) So, by the month of March Moore felt ready and wise and capable of facing down the last remaining citizen of the nineteenth century.

By May, though, he was beginning to feel he had over- trained. He was tempted to take a month's psychiatric leave from his work, but he recalled Leota's question about a history of insanity. He vetoed the notion and thought of Leota. The world stood still as his mind turned. Guiltily, he realized that he had not thought of her for months. He had been too busy with his auto- didactics, his new job, and Diane Demetrios to think of the Setqueen, his love.

He chuckled.

Vanity, he decided; I want her because everyone wants her.

No, that wasn't true either, exactly. . . . He wanted -what?

He thought upon his motives, his desires.

He realized, then, that his goals had shifted; the act 73.had become the actor. What he really wanted, first and foremost, impure and unsimple, was an in to the Set- that century-spanning stratocruiser, luxury cla.s.s, jetting across tomorrow and tomorrow and all the days that followed after-to ride high, like those G.o.ds of old who appeared at the rites of the equinoxes, slept between processions, and were remanifest with each new season, the bulk of humanity living through'all those dreary days that lay between. To be a part of Leota was to be a part of the Set, and that was what he wanted now. So of course it was vanity. It was love.

He laughed aloud. His autosurf initialed the blue lens of the Pacific like a manned diamond, casting the sharp cold chips of its surface up and into his face.

Returning from absolute zero, Lazarus-like, is neither painful nor disconcerting, at first. There are no sensations at all until one achieves the temperature of a reasonably warm corpse. By that time though, an injection of nirvana flows within the body's thawed rivers.

It is only when consciousness begins to return, thought Mrs. Mullen, to return with sufficient strength so that one fully realizes what has occurred-that the" wine has survived another season in an uncertain cellar, its vintage 53 grown rarer still-only then does an unp.r.o.nounceable fear enter into the mundane outlines of the bedroom furniture-for a moment.

It is more a superst.i.tious att.i.tude than anything, a mental quaking at the possibility that the stuff of life, one's own life, has in some indefinable way been tam- pered with. A microsecond pa.s.ses, and then only the dim recollection of a bad dream remains.

She shivered, as though the cold was still locked within her bones, and she shook off the notion of nightmares past.

74.She turned her attention to the man in the white coat who stood at her elbow.

"What day is it?" she asked him.

He was a handful of dust in the wines of Time. . . .

"August eighteen, two thousand-two," answered the handful of dust. "How do you feel?"

"Excellent, thank you," she decided. "I've just touched upon a new century-this makes three I've visited-so why shouldn't I feel excellent? I intend to visit many more."

"I'm sure you will, madam."

The small maps of her hands adjusted the counter- pane. She raised her head.

"Tell me what is new in the world."

The doctor looked away from the sudden acetylene burst behind her eyes.

"We have finally visited Neptune and Pluto," he nar- rated. "They are quite uninhabitable. It appears that man is alone in the solar system. The Laka Sahara pro- ject has run into more difficulties but it seems that work may begin next spring now that those stupid French claims are near settlement. , . ." Her eyes fused his dust to planes of gla.s.s.

"Another compet.i.tor, Futuretime Gay, entered into the time-tank business three years ago," he recited, try- ing to smile, "but we met the enemy and they are ours-Set bought them out eight months ago. By the way, our own bunkers are now much more sophistica-"

"I repeat," she said, "what is new in the world, doctor?"

He shook his head, avoiding the look she gave him.

"We can lengthen the remissions now," he finally told her, "quite a time beyond what could be achieved by the older methods."

"A better delaying action?"

54 "Yes."

"But not a cure?"

75.He shook his head.

"In my case," she told him, "it has already been abnor- mally delayed. The old nostrums have already worn thin. For how long are the new ones good?"

"We still don't know. You have an unusual variety of M.S. and it's complicated by other things."

"Does a cure seem any nearer?"

"It could take another twenty years. We might have one tomorrow."

"I see." The brightness subsided. "You may leave now, young man. Turn on my advice tape as you go."

He was glad to let the machine take over.

Diane Demetrios dialed the library and requested the Setbook. She twirled the page-dial and stopped.

She studied the screen as though it were a mirror, her face undergoing a variety of expressions.

"I look just as good," she decided after a time. "Better, even. Your nose could be changed, and your brow- line . . .

"If they weren't facial fundamentalists," she told the picture, "if they didn't discriminate against surgery, lady -you'd be here and I'd be there.

"b.i.t.c.h!"

The millionth barrel of converted seawater emerged, fresh and icy, from the Moore Purifier. Splashing from its chamber-tandem and flowing through the conduits, it was clean, useful, and singularly unaware of these vir- tues. Another transfusion of briny Pacific entered at the other hand.

The waste products were used in pseudoceramicware.

The man who designed the doubleduty Purifier was rich.

The temperature was 82 in Oahu.